The enemy, after several minor attacks, came on in strength in the afternoon of the 13th, and our line broke for awhile at Arrewage, but was mended, while the Brigade Headquarters sent up a trench-mortar battery under a Coldstream officer, for the front line had only rifles. They were set between No. 4 and No. 2 Company in the Irish Guards’ line. Later the C.O. arrived with a company of D.C.L.I. and put them next the T.M.B. (It was a question of scraping together anything that one could lay hands on and pushing it into the nearest breach.) The shelling was not heavy, but machine-gun fire came from every quarter, and lack of bombs prevented our men from dealing with snipers in the cottages, just as lack of Very lights prevented them from calling for artillery in the night. The Australians were reported to be well provided with offensive accessories, and when Battalion Headquarters, seeing there was a very respectable chance of their being surrounded once more, inquired of Brigade Headquarters how things were going, they were told that they were in strength on the left. Later, the Australians lent the Battalion some smoke-bomb confections to clean out an annoying corner of the front. That night, Saturday 13th April, the men, dead tired, dug in as they could where they lay and the enemy—their rush to Hazebrouck and the sea barred by the dead of the Guards Brigade—left them alone. Rations and ammunition came up into the line, and from time to time a few odds and ends of reinforcements. By the morning of April 14th the Australians were in touch with our left which had straightened itself against the flanks of the Forest of Nieppe, leaving most of the Brigade casualties outside it. Those who could (they were not many) worked their way back to the Australian line in driblets. The Lewis-guns of the Battalion—and this was pre-eminently a battle of Lewis-guns—blazed all that morning from behind what cover they had, at the general movement of the enemy between La Couronne and Verte Rue which they had occupied. (“They was running about like ants, some one way, some the other—the way Jerry does when he’s manœuvrin’ in the open. Ye can’t mistake it; an’ it means trouble.”) It looked like a relief or a massing for an attack, and needed correction as it was too close to our thin flank. Telephones had broken down, so a runner was despatched to Brigade Headquarters to ask that the place should be thoroughly shelled. An hour, however, elapsed ere our guns came in, when the Germans were seen bolting out of the place in every direction. A little before noon they bombarded heavily all along our front and towards the Forest; then attacked the Guards’ salient once more, were once more beaten off by our Lewis-guns; slacked fire for an hour, then re-bombarded and demonstrated, rather than attacked, till they were checked for the afternoon. They drew off and shelled till dusk when the shelling died down and the Australians and a